


A Roof That Will Not Leak

by Mintly



Category: SAKANA
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Past Abuse, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-02
Updated: 2013-08-02
Packaged: 2017-12-22 04:35:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/908981
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mintly/pseuds/Mintly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Yuudai had crumbling walls, closed doors, and a sharp tongue. Happiness wasn't exactly his cup of tea.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Roof That Will Not Leak

Yuudai could roll a marble across his floor and it would always go to the left side of his apartment. He never did though—first, because he didn't own a marble and second, because the decline was easy enough to feel. Five degrees off and continuing to sink.

He had known when he bought the place, but that was only partially why it was so cheap. Nails jutted out in rough patches near the kitchen, worn and aching from years of water damage. The floorboards were slanted and bent from sloppy construction work and the weight of lives with troubles heavier than steel supports were ever meant to hold.

Cheap and tiny and terrible but entirely his own.

Yuudai sat on the lone stool in his kitchen with a bowl of instant ramen between his precariously crisscrossed legs. He ate in relative silence with only the muffled drone of crowds walking past to accompany him. This was normal. No one came to see him, and Yuudai didn't want them to.

He set the empty bowl on the counter next to the box of cheap tea and moved to lie on the threadbare couch. He turned on the television to a mindless drama rerun before Hime pushed herself onto his stomach.

“Does Princess need a little pampering?” he asked her, scratching between her ears as she purred contentedly. She was appreciative of him at least. Someone in a neighboring apartment coughed painfully and the ceiling creaked tiredly in response. Yuudai sighed. It was him and Hime against the rest of the obnoxious, indifferent world.

***

People came to see Yuudai sometimes anyway, though he didn't want them to. Solicitors looking to sell their products, the mailman that only ever left bills, and a gruff landlord who needed far more deodorant and something better to do than harass his tenants. Like being bitten by a very big dog with very big teeth. That would work. Thankfully these visits were few and far between and could be ended with clipped replies and a door to the face. Good riddance.

Others were harder to get rid of.

_Knock knock knock. Knock knock._

Yuudai wasn't going to answer. There was nothing he wanted to see on the other side.

_Knock knock knock. Knock knock. Knock knock._

Yuudai wished he wouldn't attempt to knock to the beat of the latest pop singles, as if he were some vapid but well-meaning teenager. He may text that way, but Yuudai knew better now.

_KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK._

Yuudai turned off the light, throwing the room into darkness save for the murky light seeping through the bottom of the door. Dust motes shone visible in the line of light as the knocking faded. Hime sneezed.

The apartment returned to its quiet state, slowly sinking into itself.

***

His mom came to see him once, and she was a visitor Yuudai would actually welcome. He smiled only slightly uneasily when he met her at the train station. Yuudai led her home, her small hand gripping his elbow as he escorted her. She rarely came to the city because of her frail health. It was easier in fresher air, her doctors told her. She visited anyway a year ago and wouldn't be stopped; taking risks was an old habit too hard to break. Yuudai was mostly glad for it, his smile shaky but genuine.

He brought her into the cramped apartment and nudged the door closed with his foot. Hime wound between their legs, meowing eagerly; she was just as unused to visitors as Yuudai himself. Hime followed Yuudai's mom as she sat on the couch. Its springs whined even under her lesser weight. Hime deposited herself onto the newly available lap, and Yuudai went to make tea in the tiny kitchen.

Yuudai had one china teacup that he kept in a separate box.

It was old, stained with tea and reminiscences. He twisted the cup in his palm, thumb running over the small chip on the rim.

The cup was newly damaged, the memories still fresh.

He remembered bloody palms and wide, wide eyes filled with fear and anger, a twisted smile. He remembered hard sounds and harder knuckles. Warm fingertips and a cool blade, digging fingernails and a panicked cry. Toes seared by burning tea and a tart copper tang between his teeth, choking, drowning, sharp and hot. He remembered yellowed porcelain shattering, the gold trimmed flowers broken and falling, scattering, hiding between cracks in the rotting floorboards. The pain that blossomed like the cruelest rose, petals deadlier than its thorns. The flowers were red. His eye had stung with tears but with something else too. Something like love.

There used to be two teacups, but the patterns never matched anyway.

Yuudai handed her the steaming cup, hands shaking.

***

Today he had the afternoon shift. Yuudai woke up at noon because he had nowhere else to be and morning television always made him want to strangle whoever decided the program schedule. Or at least get them fired in the most humiliating way possible. He rolled out of bed and shuffled down to the tired and leaky communal bathroom. He got dressed, putting on a button up shirt, too short at the wrist and too loose at the waist, and a pair of pants too big just about everywhere.

Yuudai always made sure to be punctual for work. Seven years and he had never been late. He was proud. At least someone around here was pulling the weight of all the undeserving slackers. It was still too early to leave though, so he ate beef flavored ramen for breakfast-lunch because he was out of chicken.

There was a knock on his door and Yuudai cursed whoever was in charge of salesmen for bringing this plague upon him. He stomped over and yanked open the door to someone suspiciously not a salesman.

“Shigeru.”

Yuudai frowned deeply and gripped the door tighter. It groaned on its hinges.

“What do you want?”

“I jus' came t' check on ya. Haven't seen ya 'round much since th' last time I was here,” Shigeru said, his voice casual but his eyes knowing.

The faucet dripped in the silence.

“It's fine,” Yuudai said suddenly, too loud. Terse. “I'm fine. You shouldn't be here because I'm fine. I need to go to work.” He shifted his weight and glared at Shigeru's forehead, avoiding his eyes.

Shigeru looked back at him. He answered slowly, “Okay. I'll see ya later then.”

“Yes.” No.

Shigeru waved his three fingered hand as Yuudai slammed the door, leaving him standing on his doorstep.

Yuudai had let Shigeru in once, and he regretted it.

Shigeru had seen his slanted floor and peeling wallpaper and his one stool that sat alone in the small kitchen with the single chipped teacup. Yuudai had needed him then when there was no one else, when Yuudai gained a battle scar he could never wear proudly. But Shigeru had seen and was sad.

Yuudai locked the door, locked it tight. Locked it to protect his lopsided apartment and lopsided existence from anyone offering dishonest philanthropy for a lost cause.

Yuudai wasn't kind and he wasn't looking for kindness in return. But being a man with a fiery temper and splintered floorboards was enough to make people look at him with pity, with round eyes that said they were sorry, so sorry. That said he’d failed—that said he hadn't done right by some mysterious scale dictating what life he should live. Yuudai was satisfied though, he thought spitefully. He chose it, he controlled it, and that was far better than anything he had before.

Better than being controlled by someone else.

***

He had seen the inside of Jiro's apartment though he didn't mean to. There had been too much drinking and some mistakes, but none irreversible, so Yuudai thought he’d rather forget the incident entirely. He couldn't though. They had clean walls and spacious floors with a kitchen that will probably always smell like fish, like their lives, like a home.

He wasn't jealous, but it looked nice and he hated them all a little more for it.

And so when the tall one with blinding smiles and shoulder touches leaned over the register and asked if he wanted to go drinking with them again, Yuudai wasn't sure why he agreed. He said it was because he needed a drink after that particularly difficult day of condescending customers, but it might have been because he hadn't seen someone smile at him like that in a long time.

Together they stumbled into Jiro's apartment again, feet first but just barely. Through his dizzy, drunken haze Yuudai knew he was laughing because he could feel his scar crinkle under his eye. He chose to ignore it in favor of standing on top of their couch while Jiro pretended to circle like a shark. Taro laughed from the other end of the room, clutching a bottle in his hand.

Yuudai crashed at their place again. He watched the ceiling fan spin endlessly around and spilling cool air over his flushed face. He decided he would get one someday as he drifted asleep.

There were more invitations, later, not just for drinking, but for shopping and movies and video games with greasy popcorn that clung to his fingers until he had to lick them clean. Once Taisei (he remembered his name now, unfortunately) had licked them instead and Yuudai couldn't look at him for two weeks. Everyone had laughed though, and not at his expense.

Even long after, the thick, buttery flavor stuck to the inside of his cheeks and the roof of his mouth. It was absolutely disgusting, but he savored it anyway.

***

Yuudai got more smiles these days, and he smiled almost as much as he sneered. He often wondered when it would end, his almost happiness. He spoke harshly and people fled; he struggled with sentences and sincerity, and he broke his own promises as much as others did theirs. He let them, too. Yuudai never allowed anyone see the shattered glass through his thin skin, stretched over bones as brittle as his bowing floorboards. Let them run, he would think, he had a cat to feed.

Yet no matter what cruel words Yuudai said to those three, they kept talking to him. For some reason. Taro was grumpy and Taisei was annoying and Jiro was just as terrible as he always had been at everything. But Yuudai was getting used to the feeling of his eyes wrinkling as he laughed, the tugging sensation on his scar. His rusted smiling muscles ached too often for his liking. He laughed so hard he couldn't breathe sometimes, gasping and wheezing. It was painful and those three were a constant headache, but Yuudai found that it stung a lot less than loneliness.

Yuudai called them his friends inside his head only, waiting for someone to tell him it was true. He was almost confident it was.

People came to see Yuudai sometimes, though he didn't mind as much as he once had.

Lounging on his well-loved couch with his cat on his chest, up and down, Yuudai listened to the world through his thin walls. His apartment still slanted to one side and the floorboards of his apartment were still rickety, whining and groaning with every step, but he saw it differently now. He could hear the crowd outside, loud and celebratory. He wondered what kind of places they lived in, and if those places were home.

Yuudai heard a knock on his door from a hand with too few fingers and was not surprised.

He set out two new teacups filled with warm tea and adorned with crashing blue waves and a silver lining.

Yuudai answered the door.


End file.
